Mom and 4 Kids Live In A Skoolie On The Road Full Time! - BUS TOUR

Hi I'm Victoria this is our bus the wabi-sabi bus these are my four children aj emily ashley kaylee and this is chet and teton our bus is an international 3800 and it's 38 feet long so on the outside of the bus we have our outdoor table that the

kids

and I built so we can cook outside and then on this side we also have our diesel heater tank we just mounted our tank here so we can divert from our main bus tank to that because I was I'm kind of too nervous to take advantage of our tank to do that.

That's right, our new puppy. This is our outside storage that we built because we didn't have any, so there are big compartments in here and it holds our propane for the kitchen stove and also our storage underneath. A friend helped me build it, so it's all made of angle iron and sheet metal. He welded it but then we bolted it to the frame of the bus. I was a little nervous about welding on the bus because I heard some things about a short in the solar system or whatever, so we just screwed it in there and then put wooden doors on this side of the bus.

We turned off our camera system first, which really helped me feel safe. Whether it's the

road

alone or with the

kids

, we make sure the system we use is an Amazon blank. This camera system is completely wireless and simply plugs into our router and I can magnet them anywhere on the bus to get different points of view. So I can see everything around the bus if I hear a noise or something that makes me nervous and I just check it on my phone and get alerts and stuff like that, that's definitely helpful. I highly recommend it to anyone, but definitely women or families.

So getting off this side of the bus, we have a ton more built-in exterior storage. This one is waterproof, so this is where I keep all my cables and extra stuff. I really don't want to get wet. We have the first one. Water hookup, we have two separate ones that go to different tanks so we'll talk about that and then our 30 amp port power for charging you don't use it very often and then this is more storage and it houses all of the outdoor toys from children. our generator and then gas cans and outdoor trash storage which is big for a large family we produce a lot of small bags and need to get rid of them.

Some

time

s we are not near a trash can, so they go outside so they don't stick out. the bus, our solar panel on this side, it's three panels that are 380 watts each and they go right on the front half of our bus, right in front of our kayak rack. our paint we used henry's tropical on the roof and we actually ended up painting the entire bus and when I realized how cool the bus was, there was a 15 to 20 degree difference instantly so the bus was bright white and then We arrived in Arizona with some friends and I was jealous, all my friends had pretty colored buses, so a bus family, friends of ours, helped us choose this color and a group of kids and we painted it with brushes in the middle of a field in Flagstaff and I emerged from the blue Hobby Sabby bus, so that's the outside and let's go.

Continue inside, this is our entryway, we needed lots of shoe storage with all the kids, just a shelf we found on the side of the

road

and repurposed our stairs. We kept something pretty basic, just painted it to give it a little more. character, but we have a lot of water, snow and sand here so they just come off and then we can just brush it all off, makes it quick and easy with all the kids. Same with this whole side, we kept everything pretty original and just painted it, made a little storage space here for quick access to tools and things we need as we run out the door and then of course it became our rock collection.

From the beginning, people think that's a little crazy, maybe a little dangerous, but we have a serious rock collecting problem, so that's where our collection goes, in the front of our bus. We wanted to have a TV so the kids could play games and record videos. We just mounted it on a swivel stand and it actually has bungee cords on it too. it doesn't bounce around when we drive because it's a hard ride for us, it can turn wherever we want and take it out so we have access to the gaming systems there and then this is, yeah, like I said, our big rock collection.

You're okay, chat and then all the bus controls, I removed everything I didn't need like flashing lights and everything I had to remove and then added the rear view camera so I could see and a CB radio just in case. emergencies if we are traveling and we don't have cell signals so we can radio with friends or ask for help of some kind, you're okay, you're okay, this is our space in the living room, these two sofas actually Fold and become on a

full

bed in the front so the kids can know they can sleep up here or they can have sleepovers with their friends, that happens a lot.

I didn't expect us to have so many sleepovers in a place like this. It's a small space, but we can fit a lot of kids in here, this whole front storage area here is like all the kids craft stuff, board games, Emily's medical equipment, cat litter box and then down here, this is our front diesel heater, but we actually have two. the bus, one here in the front and one in the back, helps balance the heat in the bus and actually warms it up enough that we can open the windows and turn on the maximum air fan and that helps us a lot with the condensation issue that we all struggle with on buses, we can turn it up really high to be comfortable and have really cold temperatures in Colorado in the winter when we're there, but also deal with condensation, especially when it's raining and there's a lot of it too. moisture in our bus construction we decided not to remove the metal roof from our factory, many people ask many people have their own opinions on this, but when I lowered the side rails, I removed the speakers and looked at the insulation.

It was spongy and

full

, so we didn't bother taking it out. As far as I know, it hasn't been a problem for us. Our biggest drawback is single pane windows and since we didn't remove any of our windows, there are many that we use. It is a thermal lined curtain and we just cut them to fit all window sizes and they just roll down and you can definitely feel the temperature difference, whether it is in the sunlight or it is cold, you can feel the temperature difference, that is really our biggest fight. What we have is that window where it will condense there and some

time

s even if it condenses a lot and then it gets very cold, we have a whole window of ice which can be a challenge, so now we have two diesel heaters.

That temperature goes up a lot even though you feel like you're cooking from the bus, but then you open the windows and the fans to ventilate and circulate all that air, so this is our cooking space. Chat new puppy, we knew we wanted to have proper storage. For food, we know how hungry all kids are, so this is all food storage on this side. We built this for cups and water bottles and things in this little nook that we ended up with at the end of the build. Standard size. refrigerator is just a regular 110 refrigerator our toaster oven that we don't use as often anymore from time to time this is our pantry system for all of our canned goods and all that on this side we originally started with just a camp stove propane stove for camp and it was very inconvenient so we switched to a built-in and installed the propane tank underneath and that has definitely been a game changer.

The big disadvantage here is counter space, so what we really did to solve that is we have this. loot, catch up, chat so the sheet is saved and then we put this in and now we have all this extra workspace and everyone can go under it if they need to, we can eat here, put food in here or prepare here and then it just pops up. back outside hides this is our bunk space when it came to building the bus the kids bunk beds were actually my biggest priority to make sure they had enough head height room to make sure they were comfortable so they had fun, so we were like As far as measuring the kids in a sitting position, measuring them lengthwise, so we made sure they had room for shelves at the end of their bunk beds and since this is narrow here and everyone's wondering why you did the hallway so narrow. obviously the biggest person here we wanted to maximize the width of the kids bunk bed, we got as far as I could comfortably walk around here, which led us to build these stairs, I guess that's what we call them, but they're super plywood thin with only footholds. cut out so the kids can climb onto the top bunks but that worked great for us so there's a little storage space under here it's about eight inches tall we just kept some extra out of season stuff in there because it's not brilliant.

It's convenient to get to, but they just lift up at the top and we had moldings here, but again with all that condensation and airflow issue on the buses, this was a huge cold area and when that cold air was under the bunks, It made the children cold. and there was moisture, so we just removed all this wood and now that all that air is moving under there we don't have that problem anymore, so these are our two hall closets, this is all the storage for the kids' clothes and the everyone's bus. they have two boxes and then they hang storage things and that's it, it's about the amount of clothes one of our tween girls had before so they really downsized and then these doors are multipurpose for the bathroom and for the closets in the hallway so they just slide back and forth on that rail system okay and then this is our shower and toilet on this side so it's just a stand up shower and we use curtains to surround the metals just for looks , but then we have a DIY urine composting toilet. diverter here we actually tried like four toilet systems, we didn't like any of them, uh, they were expensive, they didn't work, the angles weren't kid friendly, all that stuff, that one just works really easy, we just fixed it every El day it goes out to a separate tank, it's perfect, what are you getting yourself into?

And then on this side of the hallway is our bathroom with a sink and a second toilet, and we're really interested in that because apparently no one else has put in two. bathrooms on a bus, but it made sense to us, well it made sense to us, coming from a big house and having several bathrooms, the kids always need to go to the bathroom at the same time, I don't know what that phenomenon is, but that's it what I imagined as a mom was that we needed more than one bathroom and since I like to build a symmetry, for some reason it just worked out that way and I thought we had room for two bathrooms, so we have two bathrooms, this is the back . bedroom my room we used as a multi function space uh you know extra family space and my room but it was changed several times it used to be two big sofas that converted into a bed I thought converting the bed wasn't going to work.

It may be a problem but I just didn't like it so I went with a real memory foam mattress and now it's a fixed bed but it lifts up and under this side is all my solar and then on this side is our water. so the water heater, uh, pump, okay, all that stuff and then behind the bedroom doors, here are tall cabinets and that's where I put all my clothes in the back. The bed is queen size, so it gives us a small space at the end to store blankets. and things that are nice, they always seem to fit in and give you all these cool little advantages on this side, down here is also our diesel heater that we recently added to help balance the heat from front to back in my battery. bench on the bus here are four 100 amp hour battles it's a 24 volt system so it's 200 amp hours at 24 volts so we have a Victron uh 24 volt inverter charger here and then we also have a converter 24 to 12 volts so we have a bus bar that runs anything that is 12 volts on the bus and we also use a premium DC charger to run it off the bus alternator so we can charge solar while we drive.

I learned that early on we had a major solar failure with a different system, a different company, so we drove without havingpower so adding that DC charger really helped us and now we can top it off and run the bus since it's a generator so if we like cloudy rainy days like this we can just turn that on and charge the bus or I can take out our generator and plug it into shore and charge it so we have multiple power sources so we don't have to worry about it being okay, the fresh water tank in Actually, the bus is under here and we just upgraded it.

We traveled the first year with only 55 gallons, which surprises many people for a large family, but we upgraded to 125. Yes, we felt pretty water rich. Nomadic water is a big problem, that tank is huge, it runs almost from window to window except where the inverter is, but it is a big tank and we can fill it from the outside and then I can see it from here under the bed. To quickly see where our water level is in another thing we had recently switched to and I know a lot of people because they always ask about bathroom systems and buses, is that we use the bucket system a lot that we have in ours with the german urine diverter. of people collect urine in jugs and dump it out, we needed a lot more volume than that, so we actually built a dedicated urine holding tank on our bus, so we just go to RV dump sites and dump out what looks like work better for us and we actually met some friends on the bus who do similar things.

I don't know if that's just specific to large families, but it works pretty well if you have more than a couple of people. We discovered that we have worked full time. Living on the bus for 18 months, that's when we sold our house in New York and we've been living in it, but we've actually been traveling for 16 months and we've very specifically invested a good amount of money. in our solary I think that for me or maybe for other people, knowing that you have reliable energy is important to me, that makes me feel safe and comfortable, my children are happy and comfortable, they are warm, they have their games so as not to be mean, but we have The lights in our refrigerator are on and our food is taken care of, that's stressful for me if we don't have power, so I would say a lot of people think it's crazy that I put 7000 into our solar system, but that was like A big deal for me was that money had to be spent, we wanted to feel safe being full time, it's not like we were only away on weekends and summers or whatever, this is a full time home, so we really wanted that.

The safety, so for us, solar is huge, yeah, I would say anyone who wants to do this and thinks maybe they can't because they have kids, they should definitely do it anyway. What is the worst case scenario? The children argue, my children also argued in a big house. with their own rooms we have more fun and they figure out how to get along now, but really they just take the opportunity to go out. Worst case scenario, you hate it and you're miserable, you go back and buy a house again, but at least you went out and tried it, you fell in love with it and you loved it, it was the best decision you ever made, you had a good time, you made good memories and then you go back to a house, so if you're questioning it, the answer is absolutely yes, you have to try it.

The total construction of our bus amounted to twenty-eight thousand four thousand, of which was the purchase of the bus itself. 2500 initially was like mechanical material that we needed to make the kingpins and so on, and then the rest was the construction. To be fair, we won a big expense of ours, obviously, it was solar again, but I also bought a lot of tools and things like that, we bought a lot of things, you know, new, like the new refrigerator, things like that, I think we could have done that. for a little cheaper, but during covid some things were hard to get and they were also good, so we had to drive further, I had to buy very large quantities of hardware or something and suddenly it made up for it and we found cabinets that I thought that I was going to build but they were broken at the bottom and I paid 60 for all of them so it evens out but yeah 28,000 for the whole build as it's for road revenue.

I know that's question number one. and it varies a lot for us. I'm lucky that we receive child support every week so we

live

off of that and also off the income from my eBay business that I run. We sell handmade products and vintage clothing. In fact, I liked it. That's been going on for about six years, so we're doing well, but this lifestyle doesn't require much fuel or food maintenance. We do a lot of shopping on this bus. I'm Victoria and this is our bus. The wabi-sabi bus. You can do it. follow our trip on instagram and facebook at wabi sabi bus and we also have a website that updates our travel links to our etsy store, our ebay store, all that and that is wabisabibus.com.